The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit #1)

theres a decent story. What I had a hard time with was the characters.

When Andrew Mayne is writing about his new heroines, (Sloan McPherson), diving escapades, the writing is exciting and often breathtaking. Well, she does have a problem remembering to… Theres lots of tension and all the stuff action and adventure junky readers like; all except the BANG, BANG, BANGS that made me think about episodes of Batman and Robin from the 60s…

The story is written from a first person POV. That puts the responsibility on the storyteller to tell you about herself and all the other characters so we can become invested in both the story AND the players. OK on the story, a bit lacking on the players, for me. Mayne did have flashbacks to fill in the history but this is not a dual timeline story. As much as Im tired of reading them, this book could have benefited from a few chapters of backstory. The development is just lacking.

Violence is moderate and not too descriptive: 3/10
Sexual content is non existent
Language is typical of this genre and includes f-bombs but no divine epithets: 4/10

The Girl Beneath the Sea is volume 1 in a new series. It is a stand alone novel without cliffhangers. With a location like Florida, theres certainly plenty of fodder for story material. There were enough good elements to give the second book a chance and hope for better characterizations and a few other tweaks

The story line was great but the language was completely unacceptable! I will not be reading this author again

When part time police diver Sloan McPherson surfaces to find a fresh murder scene, she’s thrust into a world where she (and by proxy her daughter) are a potential taget of cartel violence. Turning to assistance from law enforcement (within her precinct and without), she realizes local and federal authorities believe shes behind the crime, or are ready to assist in framing her for it.

From this set up we enter a taut thriller in South Florida set amongst international espionage, corrupt law enforcement, violent drug cartels and one family with a past of treasure hunting and drug running.

If you enjoy thrillers this book is for you. The pacing is tense, the turns are logical and there are characters you want to spend weeks with.

This book was an amazon first reads pick for April. I stared and read about 25 percent before deleting it. The protagonist, Sloan, doesn’t sound or act anything like a woman. NOTHING! I almost didn’t even bother reading this when within the first few pages, the protagonist pulls a woman out of the water and gives her CPS, with breaths!!! DUH – that hasn’t been done in YEARS! YEARS. Chest compressions only. But I overlooked that and kept reading. Nope, just couldn’t – she was toooo masculine and not believable as a woman.

For the most part, the story isn’t realistic. But it has a lot of action: shootouts, cartels, murders, narco trafficking, etc. So, if you like that and don’t mind suspending belief then you will enjoy this. The narrator is a young single mother who is a cop trying to solve a case. I enjoyed the scenes when she was working under water.

Short chapters and some cheesy dialogue. Because the first person narrator is young and talks like a teenager sometimes, it occasionally has a young adult vibe. There are little short side stories about her life thrown in.

It was kind of like a maze…started out one way, but kept turning and turning adding something else.
The ending didn’t provide closure for the story, it left a lot of things open for interpretation.

There is profanity and a lot of cussing.

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